This invention relates generally to a machine for handling parts and is in the general category of pick and place machines.
Specifically, the invention relates to a machine of the type in which parts are delivered one-by-one by a suitable feeder to a pick-up or receiving station of the machine. At the receiving station, each part is picked up, is transferred, and is placed on a part holder or fixture. The fixture then is advanced through one or more work stations where assembly operations, welding, testing or other operations are performed on the part. The machine usually includes several fixtures mounted on an intermittently rotatable dial or turntable so as to enable multiple parts to pass through multiple work stations around the turntable during each revolution of the turntable.
In a typical pick and place machine, the transfer device for picking up, transferring and placing the parts usually moves along mutually perpendicular rectilinear coordinates. Thus, the transfer device may move horizontally outwardly from the fixture to a position above the part, downwardly to pick up the part, upwardly and then back inwardly toward the fixture with the part, and then downwardly to place the part on the fixture. After the work operations have been completed, another transfer device undertakes the same motions but in reverse order to pick the part up from the fixture and to deliver the part from the machine. Because of the rectilinear movements, such transfer devices are relatively complex and, in addition, are required to travel outside the periphery of the turntable in order to pick up and deliver parts.